


When It All Comes Crashing Down

by LovelyLessie



Series: Have You Found Where Your Place Is? [1]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Death, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 09:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/685201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyLessie/pseuds/LovelyLessie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes there's nothing you can do, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When It All Comes Crashing Down

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "No One Said It Would Be Easy," by Cloud Cult.
> 
> Warning for multiple minor character deaths, including suicide.

They warn you that the first time is devastating, traumatic to a lot of people, and it's not that you don't take it to heart, but warnings are only worth so much. There's no way to prepare for what it's like, or what it does to you.

He's fifteen and it's a shuttle crash – thirty people on board. Two are dead before the emergency responders get there; four more don't make it to the hospital. He's in critical condition when they get there and you spend half an hour trying to stabilize him with no effect. You stop most of the bleeding, but there's internal damage you can't reach without extensive surgery, and twenty-three people who need your attention, and the nurses try to keep him alive but nothing you do helps.

You're standing there when it's over, and you're the one who has to call it, and you find out two hours later that his parents and his younger sister are there. They survived the crash, as did the others who got to the ER alive. Only the boy died – fifteen years old, a student, a soccer player, coming back home from a vacation.

Telling them he didn't make it is the hardest thing you've ever had to do.

When you get home, you're shaking, and your chest feels so tight it's making you dizzy. In the dark, you drag yourself upstairs and shuffle into the bedroom.

She wakes up halfway as you're taking off your coat and shoes, but you don't notice at first. “Hey,” she says, startling you; you catch your breath sharply.

“Hi,” you say dully, without looking up at her.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

You shake your head. She sits up suddenly, and you glance at her as you change out of your uniform, taking in the concern on her face but unable to respond to it.

“What happened?” she asks, and you shake your head again.

“Let me sleep,” you say, lying down as far away from her as you can. “Just let me sleep.”

She doesn't understand, and you know it, but she does know enough that she lies back down on her side without speaking, or touching you, or trying to make you talk about it. You know she'll ask again in the afternoon when you wake up, but for now she lets you sleep.

In your dreams, he dies again, and again, and again, and you can never stop it.

* * *

The second time it's a woman, early twenties. Her whole body is mangled: her neck is braced to keep her head still; both her legs are shattered; her chest looks collapsed where the ribs are broken. She jumped off the balcony of a fifth-floor apartment.

When they rush her in, there's a voice in the back of your head that says you already know there's nothing you can do for her. You ignore it and try anyways.

You keep her alive for two hours, but there's too much damage to save her. Her internal organs are failing, and there's too much bleeding and swelling in her brain, and her neck is broken badly enough that the slightest movement of her head could sever her spinal cord. As much as you want to, you can't fix everything fast enough to make a difference.

She dies in surgery and you can't even be sure what it was that killed her.

* * *

Eventually you stop counting.


End file.
